


tell me how

by synthetics



Category: VIXX
Genre: M/M, References to Abuse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-17
Updated: 2017-05-17
Packaged: 2018-11-02 00:38:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,695
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10933335
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/synthetics/pseuds/synthetics
Summary: taekwoon can't remember the last time he saw hongbin, but neither of them can forget the sting.





	tell me how

**Author's Note:**

> _❝i can't call you a stranger,_   
>  _but i can't call you❞_   
>  _\- paramore, "[tell me how]()"_

Taekwoon stepped into a puddle once he stepped out of the cab, and the driver hardly even waited for him to close the door before speeding off with a light spray trailing behind him. The rain had let off from the downpour of the evening and settled into a mist that gathered in tiny droplets in his hair and on his clothes. What he didn't expect to see as he approached the doorstep of his apartment building was what the rain had washed in.

"Hongbin?"

He hadn't seen Hongbin in almost a year. Not since their last altercation that had ended dangerously close to thrown punches. It had seemed like a clean break, but the end result had so many untied ends that constantly came back to haunt him while he stared at the ceiling unable to sleep. And there, sat on left the side of the door, soaked to the bone and looking more like a heap of black clothing than a person, was his nightmare.

"I'm surprised you even recognize me," the younger muttered, bitterness evident in his tone even as he slurred his s's. "I've seen you around but you treat me like a ghost." He laughed, but nothing he said was funny. "I'm a phantom."

“How long have you been out here?”

Hongbin ignored him and instead adjusted himself so he was laying on his back right along the door frame. Taekwoon silently mused to himself how even getting hit in the head with the door wouldn’t knock sense into him, then repeated his question. He was only answered with another question: “What time is it?” Before Taekwoon could check his watch, Hongbin waved him off. “Forget it. I don’t know anyway. Since before the sun went down.” A pause, almost enough for the older to say something, but not quite. “I think.”

“Let’s get you inside.” This was the last way in which Taekwoon had wanted to spend his one night of the week where he didn’t have to wake up for work the next morning. He likely would have wasted it in a smoky haze, but it was preferable to having to make sure his grumpy ex didn’t choke on his own vomit. He knelt down and grabbed Hongbin by the arm before hoisting him up, an empty vodka bottle he hadn’t seen rolling away and down the stairs. “Christ, did you drink the whole thing?” he muttered. Hongbin didn’t answer, and instead put his entire weight on Taekwoon’s right shoulder as the older tried to unlock the door. He propped the door open with one foot as he moved the deadweight through the door. “Can you at least move your feet? I can’t carry you.” Hongbin dug his nails into Taekwoon’s shoulder, and it took everything in his power not to make another snide comment. He’d already done enough damage.

What seemed like an eternity later, they made it into Taekwoon’s apartment. Hongbin made a beeline for the bathroom and left Taekwoon’s hold to lean against the wall. The older tried to follow, but he snapped, “Leave me alone.”

“It’s not like I haven’t seen everything anyway,” he responded just as bitterly. The door slammed. “Don’t lock it,” he called, but he heard the spiteful _click_ immediately afterwards. “If you make a mess, you’re cleaning it up!” Despite trying to sound rough, he stood by the door the whole time. He stared at his fingers and picked at a couple spots of dead skin around the edge of his nails. He was so absorbed in it that he startled when Hongbin opened the door.

The younger opened his mouth to say something, likely a stinging comment, then closed it and shoved past. Instead of going around the couch as would typically be expected, he gracelessly tossed himself over the armrest. He didn’t get close enough to the pillows on the other side, and landed with an “oof!” noise with his cheek against the cushion.

Taekwoon’s steadily depleting patience had begun to reach dangerously low levels. He continued to brood against the wall and his eyes bored into Hongbin’s unmoving form. “What the hell are you doing here?” Hongbin became so still Taekwoon wasn’t one-hundred-percent sure he was breathing. His loose and grumpy expression turned tense, his mouth pressed into a line. He noticed one of the younger’s hands curl into a fist.

“Hongbin…” He tried to keep his tone steady, but it was impossible to hide the concern in his voice even if he was still pissed. “Why don’t you at least change out of those soaking clothes? You don’t need to get sick.”

A scoff. “Since when did you care?”

Taekwoon had had enough. “You don’t get to say that,” he growled. His jaw clenched, but the rest of him kept his composure. “You don’t get to say that after everything you did.”

Hongbin chuckled, and some of it escaped his lips in the form of a soft giggle. The nerve of the rascal. “Everything I did? That’s a little high and mighty coming from you, don’t you think?”

“I don’t have to listen to you,” Taekwoon spat. “Not when you’re fucking shitfaced and lying facedown on my couch.”

“You didn’t have to let me in.”

“Bullshit. You came here because you knew I’d let you in.” It drove Taekwoon up a wall how Hongbin could be so nonchalant and not realize the obstruction he was being.

Hongbin turned over so he was laying on his back, his arms behind his head as he still didn’t feel like inching up to reach the pillows. “Tell me where I could have gone instead.”

Taekwoon scoffed and rolled his eyes. “What about that boyfriend you keep flaunting all over social media?”

A string of comments filtered through Hongbin’s head, several of them variations of “You don’t have to follow me, you know?” But he held his tongue (“for once in his life” Taekwoon probably would have said) and instead mumbled almost incomprehensibly, “Maybe I’m trying to get away from him.”

Taekwoon sighed, then his lips pressed into a line. “Well, you can’t stay here.”

“Wasn’t planning on it.”

“Not forever, at least.” Every fiber in Taekwoon’s body and every signal in his brain warned him against doing this. “I’ll get you some dry clothes.” His closet was a mess, clothes laid on the floor despite many empty hangers being available. At the bottom of the pile he pulled out a black t-shirt and some grey sweatpants as well as a purple blanket.

“These are mine,” Hongbin muttered when he held them in his hands. He stared at them in disbelief.

“Yeah, well,” Taekwoon said with a shrug, “I was going to donate them but I never got around to it.” Hongbin continued stare at the fabric in his hands and Taekwoon began to wonder how much he had drank other than the bottle from earlier, and if drinking was the only thing he had done that night. “Are you okay?”

He nodded. He tried really hard to hide it, but he was shivering. “Sorry, I just…” A sigh. He wore a zip-up hoodie over his shirt and as he took it off and set it to the side, Taekwoon realized why he had hesitated: purple bruises marred his arms, especially at his wrists, as if someone had grabbed him too hard and for too long.

“Jesus… Did he do this?” Hongbin acted as if he hadn’t heard the question at all and pulled his wet shirt over his head to replace it with the dry one. Taekwoon felt his jaw clench and took a moment to collect himself and swallow his rage. “What are you still doing with him?”

Hongbin shrugged. “If I close my eyes it’s not that different from when I was with you.” He changed his pants and then folded all of the wet clothes, placing them on the couch’s armrest. “At least the bruising is easier to deal with when it’s on the outside.” He wrapped the blanket around himself. “Do you still smoke?” Taekwoon was still stunned from the previous comments and didn’t respond. “Sorry,” Hongbin’s demeanor turned quiet and meek, nothing like his outbursts from when Taekwoon had first found him sopping wet on the doorstep. “I know you were trying to quit when I left.”

“It’s nothing. I’m going to put your clothes in the dryer.”

To put it frankly, Taekwoon slept like shit that night. Every time he woke up and looked over at his clock, only an hour had passed. And he hadn’t exactly gone to sleep at a reasonable time to begin with. He’d thought after a year or so he had finally put all of his internal turmoil behind him, but with Hongbin’s words kept repeating to him as if his brain were an echo chamber.

When he got up in the morning Hongbin was still on his couch. He’d fallen asleep with the lights on, an arm over his eyes. Taekwoon wandered into the kitchen and took a mug out of a cabinet above the sink, but to his dismay he had forgot to set up the coffee machine due to the events of the night. He sighed and set it up for himself, pushed the ‘start’ button, and grabbed an extra mug from the cabinet in case Hongbin wanted any. The younger hadn’t been able to stand black coffee and in his absence Taekwoon no longer kept creamer in his apartment, but tastes could change and the gesture was still there. While the coffee brewed he left to take a shower.

He returned to the kitchen, a towel over his head still drying his hair, but Hongbin had left. He had likely faked sleep when Taekwoon was in the room. Taekwoon didn’t know what he felt - whether it was disappointment or lament - but it wasn’t a positive emotion. As he folded to blanket on the couch, he spotted a sticky note on the side table with a single word scribbled on it, smeared as if in a hurry.

_Thanks._

It wasn’t until Taekwoon went to bed that night that he realized Hongbin had forgotten his clothes.


End file.
